A while back I ran this article explaining my tag line to the right (Dulce Bellum Inexpertis). Today I received a message from Charles Mills, a descendant of the man pictured in that article.

Rowland Ward was my great-great-grandfather. Born in 1818 in Lincolnshire, England, he came to America as a young man and settled in Hunts Hollow, NY. This is just south of Letchworth State Park. He raised a family there. He enlisted in the NY 4th Heavy Artillery. Some of his early training took place on the Parade Grounds that still exist in the park. Assigned to Fort Ethan Allen, he helped man the heavy guns which protected Washington, DC. Grant reassigned many of these units to combat duty in the Spring of 1864. He was at the Battle of the Wilderness. After his massive injury at Reams Station, the Confederates initially captured him but gave him back to the Union medical people. He spent a year at Lincoln General Hospital before returning home. Remarkably, he lived until 1898 in Hunts Hollow. On a government pension, he outlived his first wife and remarried. Apparently he had some celebrity status in the area. We have photos of the reconstructive process. He grew a beard to cover the injury. I believe his food intake was limited to soft and liquid foods for the rest of his life. My grandfather had fond memories of him from his youth. He was able to verbally communicate to some extent. He had a lot of heart problems after the injury. He is buried in Hunts Hollow.

Thanks for the background on Rowland Ward. One of the really gratifying things about writing this blog is hearing from kin of the folks discussed here. It’s nice to know that Ward’s story had a not so unhappy ending. From page 150 of Photographic Atlas of Civil War Injuries, here are some images of Ward’s surgical progress (click on the image for a larger version – click the larger image for a ginormous one):

For history tells a different story. History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas. In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry.

As you may have noticed, I love to match narrative with numbers. How many of you have been left scratching your heads when you compare the tables I post to the narratives of the Official Reports? How many times have we all read of a field covered with dead cavalrymen, only to find the action produced a casualty rate of 2%? I got that same tingly feeling when I read the President’s words, because I recently read words to the contrary in Walter A. McDougall’s Throes of Democracy (a pretty good book, by the way, but he got some operational stuff about the Civil War flat out wrong). Here’s what he has to say about the Civil War years and industrialization (pp. 494-495):

Did the Civil War at least stimulate industrialization? Historians of both Marxist and liberal bents once took this for granted, and it must be said that progressive optimism is a wonderful asset for a people to have. In retrospect, the Union’s national mobilization and distribution of resources doubtless taught American business powerful lessons in how to achieve economies of scale, a phenomenon to be discussed in due course. But professionals in the dismal science of economics are not surprised when their numbers reveal civil war to be a very ill wind that blows good to some firms, industries, and regions, while it slams like a hurricane into everyone else. Americans pioneered no major civilian technologies between 1861-1865 and ceased doing pure science. They invented no new models of management and paid a huge cost in lost opportunities. To be sure, hot-air balloons for artillery spotting, the Gatling gun, submarines, and ironclad warships debuted in the Civil War, but only the ironclad had a significant impact on combat. Railroads and telegraphs, by contrast, made a huge impact, but they were mature technologies before the war. So the Union’s impressive war effort really absorbed the energies of an industrial machine already in place. Production of pig iron had grown by 17 percent between 1855 and 1860 and would grow 100 percent from 1865-1870. During the war it grew 1 percent. Railroads had spread 8,700 new miles in the five years before the war and would spread 16,200 miles in the five years after. During the war just 4,000 miles of track were laid. Data on river and harbor improvements, overall manufacturing, commodity production, and exports tell similar stories.

While I’ve read about railway destruction and repair during the war, I can’t recall reading anyting about new rail lines appearing during the conflict, reaching previously remote areas and thus impacting operations. What do you think about what McDougall says here? Does it jive with your impression of wartime production and innovation?

The phrase “Getting Right with Lincoln” was coined by David Donald in this article from 1956, and it has over the years been used to describe attempts to manipulate the record of Abraham Lincoln to justify the correctness of one’s actions or beliefs. But I’m using it here to describe my ever-evolving image of the man who many, including myself, consider our greatest president. But like that big mole on his face, the man had warts that were equally apparent but often ignored. For instance, it’s been asserted by some who praise AL’s management style that he never let how an individual treated him affect his decision making process. While I’ve got many and bigger problems with anyone extolling the virtues of Lincoln’s management style (I’ve worked for people who managed like him – CHAOS!), I think people like Winfield Scott would take issue with this particular assertion. So from time to time here I’ll use this heading to discuss my developing understanding of POTUS16.

I recently finished reading Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession by Russell McClintock, which I found a much more useful analysis of the period than Nelson Lankford’s look at 1861, Cry Havoc! The Crooked Road to Civil War, 1861 (reviewed here). McClintock’s book reveals a Lincoln who was, first and foremost, a party politician. He was keenly aware of his dependence on his fellow Republicans, and his moves were governed with this dependence in mind. As a party new to power, it took awhile for things to develop, during which time Lincoln’s administration, both before and after the inauguration, adopted a policy not dissimilar to that of its predecessor, described as “masterly inactivity”. While I’ve always thought of Lincoln as a product of the machine – and at the same time as one who helped design and build it – I haven’t always considered how Party considerations influenced his decision making. It’s something I’m going to try to keep in the front part of my brain from now on, or at least until I’m shown the error of my ways.

Last night I heard friend Bill Christen speak at the Western Pennsylvania Civil War Round Table.His PowerPoint presentation was on Miss “Major” Pauline Cushman, who is also the subject of Bill’s book, Pauline Cushman: Spy of the Cumberland.The program was superb, and held the attention of the sixty or so folks in attendance for a good hour or more.I don’t get to see Bill very often, and didn’t have time to really speak with him last night, but it was a pleasure to see his presentation and to finally meet his lovely wife, Glenna Jo.Check out Bill’s Cushman sitehere.

Gettysburg NMP Ranger Scott Hartwig had this to say about my post from Tuesdayand the comments that followed:

I’ll have to let my seminar essay present my argument. This will be available next year when we publish the seminar proceedings.I know there are several theories out there but I am quite certain that the July 3 assault struck the Union line exactly where Lee intended it to.

I’ll be posting a few ORs next.Then I’ll have more on the fascinating family ties of Hugh Judson Kilpatrick; some developments concerning the history of the 30 pounder Parrott rifle that opened the First Battle of Bull Run; and hopefully a bit on Cadet John Rodgers Meigs.The interview with Jake Pierro is on hold. He’s a little under the weather; I wish him a speedy recovery and hope you will do the same. Look for a little something about a new bookon the Army of Northern Virginia, and also an update on the continuing saga of the naming of the Black Horse Troop (here and here).

In this postover at Civil War Librarian, Rea Redd recapped his weekend at the 12th Annual Gettysburg National Military Park seminar, The Fate of a Nation: The Third Day at Gettysburg.I found this snippet interesting:

Scott Hartwig: Heroes, Myth and Memory at the High Water Mark

Three major Confederate generals who participated in the assault said in the late 1880’s that Cemetery Hill was the objective.Zeigler’s Grove was cut down immediately after the battle: John Batchelder [sic] mistook The Copse of Trees which had added ten feet of height in the 20 years since the battle for Zeigler’s Grove.

For anyone who has been following this story since the publication of NPS ranger Troy Harman’s books on Lee’s plan for the Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble assault on July 3 (here is the most recent edition), the above synopsis of the comments of the highly respected and far from controversial Scott Hartwig is not insignificant.Harman’s theory, which challenges the conventional wisdom of the famous Clump (or Copse) of Trees as the focal point of the assault, has been raked over the coals in the Gettysburg cyber-community over the years, with its outnumbered, or at least less discreet, defenders being shouted down like minority members of Parliament, only much more rudely.

If you were present at this seminar, please tell me more! I’ve toured and corresponded many times with Ranger Hartwig, and if there is anything to this perhaps I can entice him to expand a bit here.

Some of the more intriguing threads I like to pull are the ones that link well known figures by blood or marriage – family ties.I’ve explored this before in the case of Peyton Manning (establishing that such a link probably doesn’t exist, see here, here and here), and you probably know the story of how a descendant’s relationship to First Bull Run Medal of Honor recipient Adelbert Ames led him to a memorable and often repeated encounter with the 35th President of the United States (if not don’t fret, I’ll talk about it later).Today let’s take a look at one of Ames’s classmates who had not one, but two descendants who are household names in the US today.

In May, 1861 Hugh Judson Kilpatrick graduated from the US Military Academy 17th out of his class of 45.Commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the 1st US Artillery on May 6, 1861, three days later he accepted a captaincy in the 5th New York Infantry, Duryee’s Zouaves.He was with that regiment in the expedition to Big Bethel in June, and in the battle there on June 10th he was severely wounded but did not retire from the field until too weak from loss of blood.Later he organized the 2nd NY Cavalry and by Dec. 1862 had risen to the colonelcy of that regiment.In June of 1863 he became a brigadier general of volunteers in command of a division of cavalry in the Army of the Potomac.He was hand-picked by Sherman to lead his cavalry in Georgia and the Carolinas, and ended the war a Major General USV and Brevet Maj. Gen. USA.After the war he twice served as US envoy to Chile, and he died in that country in 1881, of Bright’s disease at the age of 46.

Today, he serves mainly as a punch-line for Civil War authors working backwards from their conclusions and assumptions regarding his character.

Kilpatrick and his Chilean wife Luisa had a daughter, Laura Delphine, who married an American diplomat named Harry Morgan (no, not that Harry Morgan, though a like-named son would become an actor).Laura and Harry had a daughter named Gloria Laura Mercedes Morgan, who married Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt, an heir to the Vanderbilt fortune.The fruit of that union was Gloria Laura Vanderbilt, the poor little rich girl who became the centerpiece of a bitter custody battle between her widowed mother and the powerful Vanderbilt clan.Eventually, her name graced the butts of hundreds of thousands of women in the 1970’s and ‘80’s.Little Gloria Vanderbilt is the great-granddaughter of Hugh Judson Kilpatrick.

Little Gloria’s fourth marriage, to Wyatt Emory Cooper, produced two sons.Older brother Carter committed suicide in 1988, jumping from the window of the family’s 14th floor apartment before his mother’s eyes.Kilpatrick’s other great-great-grandson, Anderson, pursued a career in journalism, and today has his own news program on CNN.See the resemblance?

By the way, another CNN talking head is named Campbell Brown. She gets her first name from her mother’s side and her last from her father’s. So it seems she’s not related to the stepson of Richard S. Ewell, a Confederate brigade commander at First Bull Run.That Campbell Brown wrote a Century Magazine article on his step-dad at Bull Run that can be found in Volume I of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, and also published The First Manassas: Correspondence between Generals R. S. Ewell and G. T. Beauregard in further defense of Ewell in the face of Beauregard’s unfairly critical recollections. This bookis a collection of his Civil War related writings.

Dulce bellum inexpertis

“I am sending you these little incidents as I hear them well authenticated. They form, to the friends of the parties, part of the history of the glorious 21st. More anon.”

About

Hello! I’m Harry Smeltzer and welcome to Bull Runnings, where you'll find my digital history project on the First Battle of Bull Run which is organized under the Bull Run Resources section. I'll also post my thoughts on the processes behind the project and commentary on the campaign, but pretty much all things Civil War are fair game. You'll only find musings on my “real job” or my personal life when they relate to this project. My mother always told me "never discuss politics or religion in mixed company”, and that's sound advice where current events are concerned.

The Project

This site is more than a blog. Bull Runnings also hosts digitized material pertaining to First Bull Run. In the Bull Run Resources link in the masthead and also listed below are links to Orders of Battle, After Action Reports, Official Correspondence, Biographical Sketches, Diaries, Letters, Memoirs, Newspaper Accounts and much, much more. Take some time to surf through the material. This is a work in process with no end in sight, so check back often!